CHAPTER IX

FOES OR FRIENDS (1862)

OF the year 1862 Henry Adams could never think without
a shudder. The war alone did not greatly distress him;
already in his short life he was used to seeing people wade
in blood, and he could plainly discern in history, that man from
the beginning had found his chief amusement in bloodshed; but
the ferocious joy of destruction at its best requires that one should
kill what one hates, and young Adams neither hated nor wanted
to kill his friends the rebels, while he wanted nothing so much as
to wipe England off the earth. Never could any good come from
that besotted race! He was feebly trying to save his own life.
Every day the British Government deliberately crowded him one
step further into the grave. He could see it; the Legation knew it;
no one doubted it; no one thought of questioning it. The Trent
Affair showed where Palmerston and Russell stood. The escape
of the rebel cruisers from Liverpool was not, in a young man's eyes,
the sign of hesitation, but the proof of their fixed intention to intervene.
Lord Russell's replies to Mr. Adams's notes were discourteous in
their indifference, and, to an irritable young private
secretary of twenty-four, were insolent in their disregard of truth.
Whatever forms of phrase were usual in public to modify the harsh-
ness of invective, in private no political opponent in England, and
few political friends, hesitated to say brutally of Lord John Russell
that he lied. This was no great reproach, for, more or less, every
statesman lied, but the intensity of the private secretary's rage
sprang from his belief that Russell's form of defence covered intent
to kill. Not for an instant did the Legation draw a free breath.
The suspense was hideous and unendurable.

The Minister, no doubt, endured it, but he had support and consideration, while his
son had nothing to think about but his

FOES OR FRIENDS 129

friends who were mostly dying under McClellan in the swamps about Richmond, or
his enemies who were exulting in Pall Mall. He bore it as well as he could till
midsummer, but, when the story of the second Bull Run appeared, he could bear it no
longer, and after a sleepless night, walking up and down his room without reflecting that
his father was beneath him, he announced at breakfast his intention to go home into the
army. His mother seemed to be less impressed by the announcement than by the walking
over her head, which was so unlike her as to surprise her son. His father, too, received the
announcement quietly. No doubt they expected it, and had taken their measures in
advance. In those days, parents got used to all sorts of announcements from their children.
Mr. Adams took his son's defection as quietly as he took Bull Run; but his son never got
the chance to go. He found obstacles constantly rising in his path. The remonstrances of
his brother Charles, who was himself in the Army of the Potomac, and whose opinion had
always the greatest weight with Henry, had much to do with delaying action; but he felt,
of his own accord, that if he deserted his post in London, and found the Capuan comforts
he expected in Virginia where he would have only bullets to wound him, he would never
forgive himself for leaving his father and mother alone to be devoured by the wild beasts
of the British amphitheatre. This reflection might not have stopped him, but his father's
suggestion was decisive. The Minister pointed out that it was too late for him to take part
in the actual campaign, and that long before next spring they would all go home
together.

The young man had copied too many affidavits about rebel cruisers to miss the point
of this argument, so he sat down again to copy some more. Consul Dudley at Liverpool
provided a continuous supply. Properly, the affidavits were no business of the private
secretary, but practically the private secretary did a second secretary's work, and was glad
to do it, if it would save Mr. Seward the trouble of sending more secretaries of his own
selection to help the Minister. The work was nothing, and no one

130 THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS

ever complained of it; not even Moran, the Secretary of Legation after the departure
of Charley Wilson, though he might sit up all night to copy. Not the work, but the play
exhausted. The effort of facing a hostile society was bad enough, but that of facing friends
was worse. After terrific disasters like the seven days before Richmond and the second
Bull Run, friends needed support; a tone of bluff would have been fatal, for the average
mind sees quickest through a bluff; nothing answers but candor; yet private secretaries
never feel candid, however much they feel the reverse, and therefore they must affect
candor; not always a simple act when one is exasperated, furious, bitter, and choking with
tears over the blunders and incapacity of one's Government. If one shed tears, they must
be shed on one's pillow. Least of all, must one throw extra strain on the Minister, who had
all he could carry without being fretted in his family. One must read one's Tmes every
morning over one's muffin without reading aloud "Another disastrous Federal Defeat";
and one might not even indulge in harmless profanity. Self-restraint among friends
required much more effort than keeping a quiet face before enemies. Great men were the
worst blunderers. One day the private secretary smiled, when standing with the crowd in
the throne-room while the endless procession made bows to the royal family, at hearing,
behind his shoulder, one Cabinet Minister remark gaily to another: "So the Federals have
got another licking!" The point of the remark was its truth. Even a private secretary had
learned to control his tones and guard his features and betray no joy over the "lickings"
of an enemy in the enemy's presence.

London was altogether beside itself on one point, in especial; it created a nightmare
of its own, and gave it the shape of Abraham Lincoln. Behind this it placed another
demon, if possible more devilish, and called it Mr. Seward. In regard to these two men,
English society seemed demented. Defence was useless; explanation was vain; one could
only let the passion exhaust itself. One's best friends were as unreasonable as enemies, for
the belief

FOES OR FRIENDS 131

in poor Mr. Lincoln's brutality and Seward's ferocity became a dogma of popular
faith. The last time Henry Adams saw Thackeray, before his sudden death at Christmas
in 1863, was in entering the house of Sir Henry Holland for an evening reception.
Thackeray was pulling on his coat downstairs, laughing because, in his usual blind way,
he had stumbled into the wrong house and not found it out till he shook hands with old
Sir Henry, whom he knew very well, but who was not the host he expected. Then his tone
changed as he spoke of his and Adams's friend, Mrs. Frank Hampton, of South
Carolina, whom he had loved as Sally Baxter and painted as Ethel Newcome. Though he
had never quite forgiven her marriage, his warmth of feeling revived when he heard that
she had died of consumption at Columbia while her parents and sister were refused
permission to pass through the lines to see her. In speaking of it, Thackeray's voice
trembled and his eyes filled with tears. The coarse cruelty of Lincoln and his hirelings
was notorious. He never doubted that the Federals made a business of harrowing the
tenderest feelings of women particularly of women in order to punish their opponents.
On quite insufficient evidence he burst into violent reproach. Had Adams earned in his
pocket the proofs that the reproach was unjust, he would have gained nothing by showing
them. At that moment Thackeray, and all London society with him, needed the nervous
relief of expressing emotion; for if Mr. Lincoln was not what they said he was what
were they?

For like reason, the members of the Legation kept silence, even in private, under the
boorish Scotch jibes of Carlyle. If Carlyle was wrong, his diatribes would give his true
measure, and this measure would be a low one, for Carlyle was not likely to be more
sincere or more sound in one thought than in another. The proof that a philosopher does
not know what he is talking about is apt to sadden his followers before it reacts on
himself. Demolition of one's idols is painful, and Carlyle had been an idol. Doubts cast
on his stature spread far into general darkness like shadows of a

132 THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS

setting sun. Not merely the idols fell, but also the habit of faith. If Carlyle, too, was
a fraud, what were his scholars and school?

Society as a rule was civil, and one had no more reason to complain than every other
diplomatist has had, in like conditions, but one's few friends in society were mere
ornament. The Legation could not dream of contesting social control. The best they could
do was to escape mortification, and by this time their relations were good enough to save
the Minister's family from that annoyance. Now and then, the fact could not be wholly
disguised that some one had refused to meet or to receive the Minister; but never an
open insult, or any expression of which the Minister had to take notice. Diplomacy served
as a buffer in times of irritation, and no diplomat who knew his business fretted at what
every diplomat and none more commonly than the English had to expect; therefore
Henry Adams, though not a diplomat and wholly unprotected, went his way peacefully
enough, seeing clearly that society cared little to make his acquaintance, but seeing also
no reason why society should discover charms in him of which he was himself
unconscious. He went where he was asked; he was always courteously received; he was,
on the whole, better treated than at Washington; and he held his tongue.

For a thousand reasons, the best diplomatic house in London was Lord Palmerston's,
while Lord John Russell's was one of the worst. Of neither host could a private secretary
expect to know anything. He might as well have expected to know the Grand Lama.
Personally Lord Palmerston was the last man in London that a cautious private secretary
wanted to know. Other Prime Ministers may perhaps have lived who inspired among
diplomatists as much distrust as Palmerston, and yet between Palmerston's word and
Russell's word, one hesitated to decide, and gave years of education to deciding, whether
either could be trusted, or how far. The Queen herself in her famous memorandum of
August 12, 1850, gave her opinion of Palmerston in words that differed little from words
used by Lord John Russell, and both the

FOES OR FRIENDS 133

Queen and Russell said in substance only what Cobden and Bright said in private.
Every diplomatist agreed with them, yet the diplomatic standard of trust seemed to be
other than the parliamentarian No professional diplomatists worried about falsehoods.
Words were with them forms of expression which varied with individuals, but falsehood
was more or less necessary to all. The worst liars were the candid. What diplomatists
wanted to know was the motive that lay beyond the expression. In the case of Palmerston
they were unanimous in warning new colleagues that they might expect to be sacrificed
by him to any momentary personal object. Every new Minister or Ambassador at the
Court of St. James received this preliminary lesson that he must, if possible, keep out of
Palmerston's reach. The rule was not secret or merely diplomatic. The Queen herself had
emphatically expressed the same opinion officially. If Palmerston had an object to gain,
he would go down to the House of Commons and betray or misrepresent a foreign
Minister, without concern for his victim. No one got back on him with a blow equally
mischievous not even the Queen for, as old Baron Brunnow described him: "C'est une
peau de rhinocre!" Having gained his point, he laughed, and his public laughed with him,
for the usual British or American public likes to be amused, and thought it very
amusing to see these beribboned and bestarred foreigners caught and tossed and gored on
the horns of this jovial, slashing, devil-may-care British bull.

Diplomatists have no right to complain of mere lies; it is their own fault, if, educated
as they are, the lies deceive them; but they complain bitterly of traps. Palmerston was
believed to lay traps. He was the enfant terrible of the British Government. On the other
hand, Lady Palmerston was believed to be good and loyal. All the diplomats and their
wives seemed to think so, and took their troubles to her, believing that she would try to
help them. For this reason among others, her evenings at home Saturday Reviews, they
were called had great vogue. An ignorant young

134 THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS

American could not be expected to explain it. Cambridge House was no better for
entertaining than a score of others. Lady Palmerston was no longer young or handsome,
and could hardly at any age have been vivacious. The people one met there were never
smart and seldom young; they were largely diplomatic, and diplomats are commonly dull;
they were largely political, and politicians rarely decorate or beautify an evening party;
they were sprinkled with literary people, who are notoriously unfashionable; the women
were of course ill-dressed and middle-aged; the men looked mostly bored or out of place;
yet, beyond a doubt, Cambridge House was the best, and perhaps the only political house
in London, and its success was due to Lady Palmerston, who never seemed to make an
effort beyond a friendly recognition. As a lesson in social education, Cambridge House
gave much subject for thought. First or last, one was to know dozens of statesmen more
powerful and more agreeable than Lord Palmerston; dozens of ladies more beautiful and
more painstaking than Lady Palmerston; but no political house so successful as
Cambridge House. The world never explains such riddles. The foreigners said only that
Lady Palmerston was " sympathique."

The small fry of the Legations were admitted there, or tolerated, without a further
effort to recognize their existence, but they were pleased because rarely tolerated
anywhere else, and there they could at least stand in a corner and look at a bishop or even
a duke. This was the social diversion of young Adams. No one knew him not even the
lackeys. The last Saturday evening he ever attended, he gave his name as usual at the foot
of the staircase, and was rather disturbed to hear it shouted up as "Mr. Handrew Hadams!"
He tried to correct it, and the footman shouted more loudly: "Mr. Hanthony Hadams!"
With some temper he repeated the correction, and was finally announced as "Mr.
Halexander Hadams," and under this name made his bow for the last time to Lord
Palmerston who certainly knew no better.

Far down the staircase one heard Lord Palmerston's laugh as

FOES OR FRIENDS 135

he stood at the door receiving his guests, talking probably to one of his henchmen,
Delane, Borthwick, or Hayward, who were sure to be near. The laugh was singular,
mechanical, wooden, and did not seem to disturb his features. "Ha! . . . Ha! . . . Ha!" Each
was a slow, deliberate ejaculation, and all were in the same tone, as though he meant to
say: "Yes! . . . Yes! . . . Yes!" by way of assurance. It was a laugh of 1810 and the
Congress of Vienna. Adams would have much liked to stop a moment and ask whether
William Pitt and the Duke of Wellington had laughed so; but young men attached to
foreign Ministers asked no questions at all of Palmerston and their chiefs asked as few as
possible. One made the usual bow and received the usual glance of civility; then passed
on to Lady Palmerston, who was always kind in manner, but who wasted no remarks; and
so to Lady Jocelyn with her daughter, who commonly had something friendly to say; then
went through the diplomatic corps, Brunnow, Musurus, Azeglio, Apponyi, Van de Weyer,
Bille, Tricoupi, and the rest, finally dropping into the hands of some literary accident as
strange there as one's self. The routine varied little. There was no attempt at
entertainment. Except for the desperate isolation of these two first seasons, even
secretaries would have found the effort almost as mechanical as a levee at St. James's
Palace.

Lord Palmerston was not Foreign Secretary; he was Prime Minister, but he loved
foreign affairs and could no more resist scoring a point in diplomacy than in whist.
Ministers of foreign powers, knowing his habits, tried to hold him at arms'-length, and,
to do this, were obliged to court the actual Foreign Secretary, Lord John Russell, who, on
July 30, 1861, was called up to the House of Lords as an earl. By some process of
personal affiliation, Minister Adams succeeded in persuading himself that he could trust
Lord Russell more safely than Lord Palmerston. His son, being young and ill-balanced
in temper, thought there was nothing to choose. Englishmen saw little difference between
them, and Americans were bound to follow English experience in English character.
Minister

136 THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS

Adams had much to learn, although with him as well as with his son, the months of education
began to count as ons.

Just as Brunnow predicted, Lord Palmerston made his rush at last, as unexpected as always,
and more furiously than though still a private secretary of twenty-four.
Only a man who had been young with the battle of Trafalgar could be fresh and jaunty to that
point, but Minister Adams was not in a position to sympathize with
octogenarian youth and found himself in a danger as critical as that of his numerous predecessors.
It was late one after noon in June, 1862, as the private secretary returned,
with the Minister, from some social function, that he saw his father pick up a note from his desk
and read it in silence. Then he said curtly: "Palmerston wants a quarrel!"
This was the point of the incident as he felt it. Palmerston wanted a quarrel; he must not be
gratified; he must be stopped. The matter of quarrel was General Butler's famous
woman-order at New Orleans, but the motive was the belief in President Lincoln's brutality that
had taken such deep root in the British mind. Knowing Palmerston's habits,
the Minister took for granted that he meant to score a diplomatic point by producing this note in
the House of Commons. If he did this at once, the Minister was lost; the
quarrel was made; and one new victim to Palmerston's passion for popularity was sacrificed.

The moment was nervous as far as the private secretary knew, quite the most critical moment
in the records of American diplomacy but the story belongs to history,
not to education, and can be read there by any one who cares to read it. As a part of Henry
Adams's education it had a value distinct from history. That his father succeeded
in muzzling Palmerston without a public scandal, was well enough for the Minister, but was not
enough for a private secretary who liked going to Cambridge House, and
was puzzled to reconcile contradictions. That Palmerston had wanted a quarrel was obvious; why,
then, did he submit so tamely. to being made the victim of the quarrel?
The correspondence that followed his note was conducted feebly on his side, and he allowed

FOES OR FRIENDS 137

the United States Minister to close it by a refusal to receive further communications from him
except through Lord Russell. The step was excessively strong, for it
broke off private relations as well as public, and cost even the private secretary his invitations to
Cambridge House. Lady Palmerston tried her best, but the two ladies
found no resource except tears. They had to do with American Minister perplexed in the extreme.
Not that Mr. Adams lost his temper, for he never felt such a weight of
responsibility, and was never more cool; but he could conceive no other way of protecting his
Government, not to speak of himself, than to force Lord Russell to interpose.
He believed that Palmerston's submission and silence were due to Russell. Perhaps he was right; at
the time, his son had no doubt of it, though afterwards he felt less sure.
Palmerston wanted a quarrel; the motive seemed evident; yet when the quarrel was made, he
backed out of it; for some reason it seemed that he did not want it at least,
not then. He never showed resentment against Mr. Adams at the time or afterwards. He never
began another quarrel. Incredible as it seemed, he behaved like a well-bred
gentleman who felt himself in the wrong. Possibly this change may have been due to Lord
Russell's remonstrances, but the private secretary would have felt his education
in politics more complete had he ever finally made up his mind whether Palmerston was more
angry with General Butler, or more annoyed at himself, for committing
what was in both cases an unpardonable betise.

At the time, the question was hardly raised, for no one doubted Palmerston's attitude or his
plans. The season was near its end, and Cambridge House was soon closed.
The Legation had troubles enough without caring to publish more. The tide of English feeling ran
so violently against it that one could only wait to see whether General
McClellan would bring it relief. The year 1862 was a dark spot in Henry Adams's life, and the
education it gave was mostly one that he gladly forgot. As far as he was
aware, he made no friends; he could hardly make enemies; yet towards the

138 THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS

close of the year he was flattered by an invitation from Monckton Milnes to Fryston, and it
was one of many acts of charity towards the young that gave Milnes
immortality. Milnes made it his business to be kind. Other people criticised him for his manner of
doing it, but never imitated him. Naturally, a dispirited, disheartened
private secretary was exceedingly grateful, and never forgot the kindness, but it was chiefly as
education that this first country visit had value. Commonly, country visits
are much alike, but Monckton Milnes was never like anybody, and his country parties served his
purpose of mixing strange elements. Fryston was one of a class of houses
that no one sought for its natural beauties, and the winter mists of Yorkshire were rather more
evident for the absence of the hostess on account of them, so that the singular
guests whom Milnes collected to enliven his December had nothing to do but astonish each other,
if anything could astonish such men. Of the five, Adams alone was tame;
he alone added nothing to the wit or humor, except as a listener; but they needed a listener and he
was useful. Of the remaining four, Milnes was the oldest, and perhaps
the sanest in spite of his superficial eccentricities, for Yorkshire sanity was true to a standard of its
own, if not to other conventions; yet even Milnes startled a young
American whose Boston and Washington mind was still fresh. He would not have been startled by
the hard-drinking, horseracing Yorkshireman of whom he had read
in books; but Milnes required a knowledge of society and literature that only himself possessed, if
one were to try to keep pace with him. He had sought contact with
everybody and everything that Europe could offer. He knew it all from several points of view, and
chiefly as humorous.

The second of the party was also of a certain age; a quiet, well-mannered, singularly agreeable
gentleman of the literary class. When Milnes showed Adams to his
room to dress for dinner, he stayed a moment to say a word about this guest, whom he called
Stirling of Keir. His sketch closed with the hint that Stirling was

FOES OR FRIENDS 139

violent only on one point hatred of Napoleon III. On that point, Adams was himself sensitive,
which led him to wonder how bad the Scotch gentleman might be.
The third was a man of thirty or thereabouts, whom Adams had already met at Lady Palmerston's
carrying his arm in a sling. His figure and bearing were
sympathetic almost pathetic with a certain grave and gentle charm, a pleasant smile, and an
interesting story. He was Lawrence Oliphant, just from Japan, where he
had been wounded in the fanatics' attack on the British Legation. He seemed exceptionally sane
and peculiarly suited for country houses, where every man would enjoy
his company, and every woman would adore him. He had not then published "Piccadilly"; perhaps
he was writing it; while, like all the young men about the Foreign Office,
he contributed to The Owl.

The fourth was a boy, or had the look of one, though in fact
a year older than Adams himself. He resembled in action and
in this trait, was remotely followed, a generation later, by another
famous young man, Robert Louis Stevenson a tropical bird, high-crested, long-beaked,
quick-moving, with rapid utterance and screams of humor, quite unlike any
English lark or nightingale. One could hardly call him a crimson macaw among owls, and yet no
ordinary contrast availed. Milnes introduced him as Mr. Algernon
Swinburne. The name suggested nothing. Milnes
was always unearthing new coins and trying to give them currency. He had unearthed
Henry Adams who knew himself to be worthless and not current. When Milnes lingered
a moment in Adams's room to add that Swinburne had written some poetry, not yet
published, of really extraordinary merit, Adams only wondered what more Milnes would
discover, and whether by chance he could discover merit in a private secretary. He was
capable of it.

In due course this party of five men sat down to dinner with the usual club manners
of ladyless dinner-tables, easy and formal at the same time. Conversation ran first to
Oliphant who told his

140 THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS

dramatic story simply, and from him the talk drifted off into other channels, until
Milnes thought it time to bring Swinburne out. Then, at last, if never before, Adams
acquired education. What he had sought so long, he found; but he was none the wiser;
only the more astonished. For once, too, he felt at ease, for the others were no less
astonished than himself, and their astonishment grew apace. For the rest of the evening
Swinburne figured alone; the end of dinner made the monologue only freer, for in 1862,
even when ladies were not in the house, smoking was forbidden, and guests usually
smoked in the stables or the kitchen; but Monckton Milnes was a licensed libertine who
let his guests smoke in Adams's bedroom, since Adams was an American-German bar-
barian ignorant of manners; and there after dinner all sat or lay till far into the night,
listening to the rush of Swinburne's talk. In a long experience, before or after, no one ever
approached it; yet one had heard accounts of the best talking of the time, and read
accounts of talkers in all time, among the rest, of Voltaire, who seemed to approach
nearest the pattern.

That Swinburne was altogether new to the three types of men-of-the-world before
him; that he seemed to them quite original, wildly eccentric, astonishingly gifted, and
convulsingly droll, Adams could see; but what more he was, even Milnes hardly dared
say. They could not believe his incredible memory and knowledge of literature, classic,
medival, and modern; his faculty of reciting a play of Sophocles or a play of
Shakespeare, forward or backward, from end to beginning; or Dante, or Villon, or Victor
Hugo. They knew not what to make of his rhetorical recitation of his own unpublished
ballads "Faustine"; the "Four Boards of the Coffin Lid"; the "Ballad of Burdens"
which he declaimed as though they were books of the Iliad. It was singular that his most
appreciative listener should have been the author only of pretty verses like "We wandered
by the brookside," and "She seemed to those that saw them meet"; and who never cared
to write in any other tone; but Milnes took everything

FOES OR FRIENDS 141

into his sympathies, including Americans like young Adams whose standards were
stiffest of all, while Swinburne, though millions of ages far from them, united them by
his humor even more than by his poetry. The story of his first day as a member of Profes-
sor Stubbs's household was professionally clever farce, if not high comedy, in a young
man who could write a Greek ode or a Provenal chanson as easily as an English
quatrain.

Late at night when the symposium broke up, Stirling of Keir wanted to take with him
to his chamber a copy of "Queen Rosamund," the only volume Swinburne had then
published, which was on the library table, and Adams offered to light him down with his
solitary bedroom candle. All the way, Stirling was ejaculating explosions of wonder, until
at length, at the foot of the stairs and at the climax of his imagination, he paused, and
burst out: "He's a cross between the devil and the Duke of Argyll!"

To appreciate the full merit of this description, a judicious critic should have known
both, and Henry Adams knew only one at least in person but he understood that to a
Scotchman the likeness meant something quite portentous, beyond English experience,
supernatural, and what the French call moyengeux, or medival with a grotesque turn.
That Stirling as well as Milnes should regard Swinburne as a prodigy greatly comforted
Adams, who lost his balance of mind at first in trying to imagine that Swinburne was a
natural product of Oxford, as muffins and pork-pies of London, at once the cause and
effect of dyspepsia. The idea that one has actually met a real genius dawns slowly on a
Boston mind, but it made entry at last.

Then came the sad reaction, not from Swinburne whose genius never was in doubt,
but from the Boston mind which, in its uttermost flights, was never moyengeux. One felt
the horror of Longfellow and Emerson, the doubts of Lowell and the humor of Holmes,
at the wild Walpurgis-night of Swinburne's talk. What could a shy young private secretary
do about it? Perhaps, in his good nature, Milnes thought that Swinburne might find a
friend

142 THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS

in Stirling or Oliphant, but he could hardly have fancied Henry Adams rousing in him
even an interest. Adams could no more interest Algernon Swinburne than he could
interest Encke's comet. To Swinburne he could be no more than a worm. The quality of
genius was an education almost ultimate, for one touched there the limits of the human
mind on that side; but one could only receive; one had nothing to give nothing even to
offer.

Swinburne tested him then and there by one of his favorite tests Victor Hugo for to
him the test of Victor Hugo was the surest and quickest of standards. French poetry is at
best a severe exercise for foreigners; it requires extraordinary knowledge of the language
and rare refinement of ear to appreciate even the recitation of French verse; but unless a
poet has both, he lacks something of poetry. Adams had neither. To the end of his life he
never listened to a French recitation with pleasure, or felt a sense of majesty in French
verse; but he did not care to proclaim his weakness, and he tried to evade Swinburne's
vehement insistence by parading an affection for Alfred de Musset. Swinburne would
have none of it; de Musset was unequal; he did not sustain himself on the wing.

Adams would have given a world or two, if he owned one, to sustain himself on the
wing like de Musset, or even like Hugo; but his education as well as his ear was at fault,
and he succumbed. Swinburne tried him again on Walter Savage Landor. In truth the test
was the same, for Swinburne admired in Landor's English the qualities that he felt in
Hugo's French; and Adams's failure was equally gross, for, when forced to despair, he had
to admit that both Hugo and Landor bored him. Nothing more was needed. One who
could feel neither Hugo nor Landor was lost.

The sentence was just and Adams never appealed from it. He knew his inferiority in
taste as he might know it in smell. Keenly mortified by the dullness of his senses and
instincts, he knew he was no companion for Swinburne; probably he could be only an
annoyance; no number of centuries could ever educate him to

FOES OR FRIENDS 143

Swinburne's level, even in technical appreciation; yet he often wondered whether
there was nothing he had to offer that was worth the poet's acceptance. Certainly such
mild homage as the American insect would have been only too happy to bring, had he
known how, was hardly worth the acceptance of any one. Only in France is the attitude
of prayer possible; in England it became absurd.

Even Monckton Milnes, who felt the splendors of Hugo and Landor, was almost as
helpless as an American private secretary in personal contact with them. Ten years
afterwards Adams met him at the Geneva Conference, fresh from Paris, bubbling with de-
light at a call he had made on Hugo: "I was shown into a large room," he said, "with
women and men seated in chairs against
the walls, and Hugo at one end throned. No one spoke. At last
Hugo raised his voice solemnly, and uttered the words: 'Quant moi, je crois en Dieu!'
Silence followed. Then a woman responded as if in deep meditation: 'Chose sublime! un
Dieu qui croft en Dieu!"'

With the best of will, one could not do this in London; the actors had not the instinct
of the drama; and yet even a private secretary was not wholly wanting in instinct. As soon
as he reached town he hurried to Pickering's for a copy of "Queen Rosamund," and at
that time, if Swinburne was not joking, Pickering had sold seven copies. When the
"Poems and Ballads" came out, and met their great success and scandal, he sought one of
the first copies from Moxon. If he had sinned and doubted at all, he wholly repented and
did penance before "Atalanta in Calydon," and would have offered Swinburne a solemn
worship as Milnes's female offered Hugo, if it would have pleased the poet. Unfortunately
it was worthless.

The three young men returned to London, and each went his own way. Adams's
interest in making friends was something desperate, but "the London season," Milnes used
to say, "is a
season for making acquaintances and losing friends"; there was no intimate life. Of
Swinburne he saw no more till Monckton

144 THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS

Milnes summoned his whole array of Frystonians to support him in presiding at the
dinner of the Authors' Fund, when Adams found himself seated next to Swinburne,
famous then, but no nearer. They never met again. Oliphant he met oftener; all the world
knew and loved him; but he too disappeared in the way that all the world knows. Stirling
of Keir, after one or two efforts, passed also from Adams's vision into Sir William
Stirling-Maxwell. The only record of his wonderful visit to Fryston may perhaps exist still
in the registers of the St. James's Club, for immediately afterwards Milnes proposed
Henry Adams for membership, and unless his memory erred, the nomination was sec-
onded by Tricoupi and endorsed by Laurence Oliphant and Evelyn Ashley. The list was
a little singular for variety, but on the whole it suggested that the private secretary was
getting on.